Talked to a Toshiba sales person today and was told the Intel Chip is way faster than the AMD. I was referring to the AMD Quad core and they said that the Intel runs faster but yet costs more. Have never owned an Intel based computer. Any pro's or cons in my thinking. Looking for a Quad core AMD based laptop with a 6gb Ram, 640 HDD, decent sound. I do play games so a decent vid card would be nice. Anyone have any suggestions or links. Trying to stay under $500 but looking more and more like that won't be possible. I like Toshiba but am open to other brands.

if you dont plan of doing CPU intensive tasks like video encoding. compression, decrypting information etc. the AMD is your best bet. intel offers higher performance at a higher price.
but 90% of the people wont need high performance as its just a laptop after all.

if you only stress your CPU as far as gaming does, a nice A10 or A8 AMD APU based lappy will suit you well.

Personally I think Toshiba has the best laptops especially for longevity. My 6 year old Toshiba notebook with a Intel Core 2 Duo is still running as if I bought it last year. I also have an AMD based HP Tri-Core that I bought a year ago, based on Phenom II. The Toshiba still outperforms the HP by far IMO.

That said, when it come to graphics, AMD is king, and for a good performing notebook, graphics plays a huge role. Looking at your $500 budget, I recommend an AMD Trinity based APU based notebook. If you up your budget, then look for a new Intel Quad but with AMD/NV Graphics. No Intel Graphics, they suck.

Personally I think Toshiba has the best laptops especially for longevity.

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I have to agree with this - I work on a lot of laptops from brands like acer, asus, dell, etc - toshiba is above all my favorite. their hardware seems to last longer and be more stable, and that results in fewer software issues as well.

as far as intel vs amd, de das dude is right. unless you are doing something really cpu intensive, imo it's simply not worth the extra cost. my main rig is an intel - but i really do use the cpu. my server and htpc are both amd, and the htpc is great for gaming. no sense spending more if you won't use it.

I have to agree with this - I work on a lot of laptops from brands like acer, asus, dell, etc - toshiba is above all my favorite. their hardware seems to last longer and be more stable, and that results in fewer software issues as well.

as far as intel vs amd, de das dude is right. unless you are doing something really cpu intensive, imo it's simply not worth the extra cost. my main rig is an intel - but i really do use the cpu. my server and htpc are both amd, and the htpc is great for gaming. no sense spending more if you won't use it.

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Agreed 100%. Worked with both HP and Acer, and am not really impressed, but only because I used a Toshiba , and now own one. Toshiba's just feel like they have a solid build quality and top notch software and performance.

If you are going after gaming and want to stay under $500 then you are almost certainly going to have to go with the integrated GPU. In that case AMD actually kills Intel. AMD offers less CPU performance but more GPU performance with their integrated graphics. The AMD CPU performance would still be adequate though.

Just to follow up, if you are looking the $500 max range it pretty much comes down to the following:

i3-3110M w/ HD4000 Graphics vs. A8-4500M w/ 7640G Graphics

The i3 is a dual core w/ Hyperthreading, the A8 is a Quad-Core, but performance wise I believe the i3 is actually slightly faster in most tasks, unless the task is heavly multi-threaded and takes advantage of the extra cores on the A8. However, the 7640G is way better than the HD4000 in games.

This seems to be the Toshiba you have your eye on, and I'd say that it is a good laptop for sure.

Personally, I'd save the $50 and go with this Acer. But that is only because I know I'd be upgrading to 8GB of RAM pretty quickly, as well as putting in a 750GB Seagate XT drive, so I'd want to save the money upfront and put it towards the upgrades I wanted to do, since going with the more expensive Toshiba only gets me slightly more memory and a bigger hard drive, which I'd just be replacing anyway.

Depends on the games a 7640D is plenty to play quite a few games without issues.

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It can handled pretty much all modern games, especially considering the resolution on a $500 laptop is almost certainly going to be 1366x768 or maybe 1600x900. The 7650G can handle gaming on low-medium settings at that resolution.

It can handled pretty much all modern games, especially considering the resolution on a $500 laptop is almost certainly going to be 1366x768. The 7650G can handle gaming on low-medium settings at that resolution.

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and you will be lucky to get 30FPS Especially if they have stuck cheap ram in it

if you go buying a laptop AND EXPECTING It to run games(OF ANY variety) you are out of your mind not gonna happen for $500.00
and no cdawall is wrong while the 7650G can handle most OLDER titles(2 and 3 years old) its far from capable of running "all modern games" especially if they stick 1333 ram in it
and the toshiba rep is correct intels chips use less power and are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE faster then the amd chips

and you will be lucky to get 30FPS Especially if they have stuck cheap ram in it

if you go buying a laptop AND EXPECTING It to run games(OF ANY variety) you are out of your mind not gonna happen for $500.00
and no cdawall is wrong while the 7650G can handle most OLDER titles(2 and 3 years old) its far from capable of running "all modern games" especially if they stick 1333 ram in it

and you will be lucky to get 30FPS Especially if they have stuck cheap ram in it

if you go buying a laptop AND EXPECTING It to run games(OF ANY variety) you are out of your mind not gonna happen for $500.00
and no cdawall is wrong while the 7650G can handle most OLDER titles(2 and 3 years old) its far from capable of running "all modern games" especially if they stick 1333 ram in it

That's a great kit on something that supports it. AMD spec's the A8-4500M with 1600/1600L/1333L that is the reason I went for the CAS9 DDR1600 would be the best kit that is fully supported. Trust me going from 1333 CAS9 to 1600 CAS9 will make a difference.

That's a great kit on something that supports it. AMD spec's the A8-4500M with 1600/1600L/1333L that is the reason I went for the CAS9 DDR1600 would be the best kit that is fully supported. Trust me going from 1333 CAS9 to 1600 CAS9 will make a difference.

and you will be lucky to get 30FPS Especially if they have stuck cheap ram in it

if you go buying a laptop AND EXPECTING It to run games(OF ANY variety) you are out of your mind not gonna happen for $500.00
and no cdawall is wrong while the 7650G can handle most OLDER titles(2 and 3 years old) its far from capable of running "all modern games" especially if they stick 1333 ram in it
and the toshiba rep is correct intels chips use less power and are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE faster then the amd chips

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Really, my brazos can run modern games at low settings how do you explain that? the A10 APU is capable of playing most games on medium settings at 720p

If you wait for the sales at the Dell Outlet, whether the business side or the home office side. You can pick up an i5 3210 with an HD 4000 for $360 to $400. An Inspiron 2520 would be a really good candidate...and it will play most modern games at decent enough settings(just check out YT for samples). I personally beat/played Borderlands II on one and it was buttery smooth. Anything less and you'll be slightly disappointed. Although, an i3-2370 with an HD 3000 is close...I've played on both, the latter i3 is borderline and really doesn't cut it in comparison with the HD 4000. If you have to have a discreet graphics card...it probably is doable at just over $500, but the cards in that range aren't all that great...

If I was to purchase a laptop now...I'd sit and wait until the Dell Latitude 5520 or 5530(I prefer the 5520) went on sale and nab an i5-3210. I think you'd be pretty happy with the results.

I personally use this a8 at home. Best laptop I've ever owned - period. Not the greatest gamer, but it will do light gaming and it has the best keyboard I've ever typed on. It will run most of the games I play just fine, but I wouldn't consider it a gaming laptop...

I recently also purchased an HP M6 with an A8...it will do what the Ivy Bridge laptops do and I think it gamed just as well. If you run into one of these M6's cheap...they're also a good candidate. Damn good looking too. Walmart had them in stock for awhile, but they're getting hard to find. Pretty thin too, about 80-90% thickness of the Pavilion DV6's.